DXpedition W8S Swains Island IOTA OC-200

The Dutch participation in this DXpedition is very large. I think this is one of the first major DXpedition to the Pacific where 5 Dutch people go. We are all working to get everything prepared. A lot was already arranged in 2020, but the antenna park has changed considerably, because the high bands are now open. In terms of operators, we have a good mix between the different modes.

Operating:

With 4 stations we are going to be active simultaneously 24 hours a day from 2 different camps. 2 additional stations are also available on each camp for the operator that still like to operate outside of their planned hours or the scheduled operators can do FT8 on the third station.
The camps are located about 500 meters apart on the beach with a clear view to Europe, Japan and North America. We are going to be active in the modes: CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8. The plan is to operate simultaneously on certain bands with 2 stations.
The demand for 6 meters is also very high and possible F2 openings are certainly present and that is why we bring a separate station for 6 meters with us. We will also do EME at 6 meters for a few days.
We expect to be able to make approximately 75,000 QSOs in total.

Ausrüstung:

Antennas:

Other equipment:

Both camps have a complete sets of bandpass filters between the radio and amplifier. Behind the amplifier we will use High Power 4O3A bandpass filters and a triplexer for the Hexbeam. Thanks to WiMo and 4O3A for borrowing some of the filters for our DXpedition.
We will send 6 boxes to American Samoa in total of 330 KG. All operators will bring another 700 KG checkin luggage. In total we have approx. 1.000 KG of equipment.

QSL:

QSL cards go through our QSL manager Charles M0OXO. We will try to upload our logs daily via satellite to Clublog, there you can get very valuable information about propagation.

Information:

On our website you can find more information: www.swains2023.com
Follow us on Twitter: Swains 2023 and/or Facebook: Swains 2023

Sponsoring:

We would like to thank everyone who has already made a financial contribution for our DXpedition and we appreciate that very much. During the preparation phase of this DXpedition is where we have the largest costs, and most of the these will be paid by the operators themselves. Our main sponsor for this DXpedition is currently the German DX Foundation (GDXF) and more information can be found at: https://www.gdxf.de
I would also like to mention the European DX Foundation which also makes a great financial contribution to our DXpedition: https://www.eudxf.eu
Of course, we hope to be able to add your callsign on our sponsor page.

See you in the pile-up.
On behalf of the entire team, Ronald Stuy PA3EWP